When he became Metropolitan police commissioner in 1972, Robert Mark said he had “never experienced … blindness, arrogance and prejudice on anything like the scale accepted as routine in the Met”. Louise Casey’s landmark report shows that nothing has changed. It refutes Cressida Dick’s suggestion that problems were limited to a few bad apples. The rot goes all the way through. Findings that the Met is institutionally racist, misogynistic and homophobic echo those in the 1999 Macpherson report. Many hoped that that inquiry would spark a transformation in the force. This time there is greater cynicism.
The picture Lady Casey paints is damning. The Met is unmoored from its purpose and beset by scandals. Consent is “broken” and public trust has collapsed. The force is failing to do its essential job of investigating and preventing crime. The 363-page Casey report details cases of shocking ineptitude, such as evidence from rape investigations being binned after a fridge broke, and discrimination, such as stop and search being used disproportionately against black Londoners.
